Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoTom Dodge | Dispatch file photoCoyote attacks on pets are not common, but owners should keep an eye on their smaller animals when they’re outside, said Ohio Division of Wildlife Officer Brad Kiger.

It was routine for Vickie Steiner to let her three dachshunds out around 10 p.m. to exercise and do their business in the fenced yard of her Upper Arlington home.

After 25 minutes, two dogs came back in through the pet door. Patsy, a miniature dachshund, didn’t. Steiner went outside to find that the pet she loved had been killed.

“We’re going on the assumption that it was a coyote,” said Dr. Colleen Liebers, the veterinarian who examined Patsy last week. “It was a big animal that did this.”

“They’re opportunistic,” feeding on garbage, food left outside, mice and rats that come out of sewers, and small animals and pets, he said.

Coyotes searching for food follow waterways and railroad tracks that bring them into most suburbs and Downtown, he said.

Coyote attacks on pets are not common, Kiger said, but owners should keep an eye on their smaller animals when they’re outside — and don’t leave food out for the neighborhood cat.

Attacks on humans are extremely rare, he said. Most coyotes will run from humans, but if confronted by a coyote, “you might want to throw stuff at it. Scream, yell, make yourself bigger,” Kiger said. Backing away only makes the animal bolder, but use common sense — don’t get close.

The wildlife division can refer residents to a trapper. By law, all coyotes that are trapped must be euthanized; the animals cannot be rehabilitated or kept as pets, he said.

Residents of Obetz in more-rural southern Franklin County have lost two pets to coyotes over the past 10 years, and village wildlife officers have killed three coyotes in the past eight weeks, village Administrator Rod Davisson said.

“They’re looking for easy prey. They’re not going to go after a Great Dane,” Davisson said.